


My Amanda

by Esgalnen



Category: Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 00:09:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4939186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esgalnen/pseuds/Esgalnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of vignettes on how Lee Stetson began to realise that Amanda King was the best thing that ever happened to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Amanda

** My Amanda **

 

I’ll be honest, picking Amanda at the train station was pure fluke and when she wanted to get involved with the agency I was convinced that she’d prove a liability and her hunches weren’t worth listening to.  But thinking back now, when the chips were down, Amanda always came through.

 

**SAMK**

 

I remember when Ted Glaser had me brainwashed.  Amanda spotted that there was something wrong – unfortunately, her suspicious weren’t listened to – perhaps if she’d been an agent they might have been – perhaps not.  I’d been having weird dreams, a sinking feeling, steam and a blue door.  It was sheer fluke that the Potomac Pinkie asked for her help to pick up the linen.  She’d spotted the blue door and opening it discovered my file and that damn Lester Duck.  She even called me and tried to warn me but I disregarded everything she said – makes me cringe now even thinking about it.  Ogden interrupted her telephone call and tried to kill her but she bashed him with the lamp, then grabbing the toy she managed to escape and get the to the hotel.  I’d been programmed to kill Billy and I was just pulling the hammer back on my gun when Amanda was suddenly standing in front of me.  She was staring at me saying one word over and over, ‘Lee? Lee, Don’t. Don’t! Billy is your friend.’  I found my attention focusing on the duck, she tried to pull the string but it broke.  I vaguely remember fighting my gun but I couldn’t stop lifting it.  I was pulling the hammer back. She bashed the toy on the table knocking over a cup and then it spoke “What a guy! You’ve got real potential.  Follow instructions.  Success comes a step at a time.”  Amanda was staring at me then she said again, “Lee, don’t.” She swallowed and began, “Success comes one step at a - Success comes a step at a time.” And somehow that broke the conditioning.  I closed my eyes and released the hammer on my gun, I managed a quick smile at Amanda and then she’d picked up the toy, made some comment about not leaping out of the cake for another hour and then she was gone.  I remember running my hand over my face and for the first time thanking any and all deities for the existence of Amanda King

 

**SAMK**

 

The second time Amanda impressed me was when we went to fetch Ted Rudolph, code name Janus.  It was supposed to be a simple extraction.  Of course it didn’t turn out that way.  I was wounded, my last clear memory is of a bullet hitting me and stumbling back to the cabin.  I was half-aware of Amanda removing my jacket and Rudolph trying to staunch the bullet wound before I passed out.  I heard the rest of the story from Billy later in hospital.  He told me that Amanda went out with a white flag, persuaded the two KGB agents to call a truce.  One of them went to the car for the Medical Kit.  He told me later that she’d boiled water and then cleaned and bandaged both mine and Ivan’s wounds.  I even asked her how she’d pulled it off, but she’d just shrugged and replied, “It’s Christmas Eve,” as if that explained it all.  That’s when I began to realize that My Amanda had hidden depths.

 

**SAMK**

 

My Amanda, she has a sixth sense when something’s not right.  I found that out the first time when I was being brainwashed by Ted Glaser, she knew immediately that something was wrong.  Then again at the Perrine ranch when I was posing as a barman and was caught listening in on his deal.  Got myself caught and locked  in the freezer.  How she knew I was in trouble I’ll never know – not as Amanda ever told me.  She just shrugged and brushed it off (again).  That’s when I began to reconsider my opinion of her. 

 

**SAMK**

 

Even Francine has been forced to admit that Amanda has hidden depths, despite her earlier misgivings.  The one case they were involved with when they both had to work as maids for a firm called ‘Private Party’ and some sensitive information disappeared from the gentleman’s safe.  Although I liked Amanda we were still touchy and I admit that I did feel guilty when she said that she and I never went out to have fun and that she was just a cover. When had I started to become uncomfortable about treating her in such a casual manner?  I don’t know, but that made me feel awkward.   But Amanda really showed her mettle.  When she saw Billy and I being escorted at gunpoint to the car she had the presence of mind to alert Francine; then when she and Francine got to the warehouse Francine told Amanda to go and fetch the police but Amanda refused.  She said that Billy and I had done a lot for her and she wanted to help.  Even took Francine by surprise.  She walked right up to Frankie Columbus, distracting him for Francine, and then when Burling pulled a gun on us, Amanda knocked him over.  We got the whole gang, thanks in no small part to My Amanda.  She was marvellous.

 

**SAMK**

 

When did I start thinking that I would like her to be more than a friend?  I think it was when I posed as a ‘Burned Out’ Agent.  Her simple support of me that I wasn’t a ‘Burn Out’ case, her knocking Harris out and then her total belief in me even though she didn’t know what I was doing.  Even her pretending to be shot, hearing Brackin’s plan and then recruiting the truck driver.  One of the first things that Harris said when we had him in  interrogation was “That agent of yours, Amanda King, she’s something else.  Very smart, I underestimated her.”  Billy and I exchanged a long look at this point and I wondered if he was thinking what I was, that both he and I sometimes seriously underestimate Amanda.  I’ve never been so proud of her as the day she was given the Presidential Citation – even if we’d had to wait until we had an office of our own to display it.

 

**SAMK**

 

Actually, most of the time Amanda shows a level of intuition that I’ve never seen before in my life.  Even the old head of The Agency, Harry V Thornton recruited her – to spy on me!  I admit that I was somewhat put out at first and we spent a good portion of the case chasing each other’s tails.   Yet she showed an ability to think on her feet, when Larry Crawford turned up posing as Harry V Thornton she pressed the silent alarm to alert the rest of the office.  She used my baseball to distract Crawford before I entered Thornton’s apartment and probably saved my life although I was infuriated with her at the time.  We cleared it up though.  It was all to do with our founder pretending to be a double agent, when in actual fact he was a triple agent. His ‘pardon letter’ from Eisenhower had gone missing and Harry wanted Amanda to find it. Harry even told Amanda what I’d let slip when we were on a fishing trip together, that I’d follow her ‘blind through a blizzard at midnight.’  I was slightly embarrassed when I discovered that.  But it was her intuition that saved Thornton’s skin.  He’d told her that he’d taken the code name ‘Kolinsky’ and that it was the Russian name for their ‘Dancing Weasel’.   She opened the file cabinet and one file was marked ‘Dancing Weasel’.  She opened it and the letter was in front of her.  When she brought it to Adkin’s Chemical and the whole situation was sorted out Harry said of her that ‘he’d been in good hands’.  I never told her but he was right – with Amanda I was always in good hands.

 

  **SAMK**

 

My one abiding memory of Amanda is that she has always been there.  I remember when I had to retrieve the Barnstorm  List out of Sainte Marie and Amanda had begged to be allowed to pick me up from Dulles.  I was being beaten up by Neumann and his goons and she managed to distract them long enough for me to get into the car.  Unfortunately they’d also managed to give me a concussion.  I passed out in the car and crashed Amanda’s station wagon into a bus kiosk.  The relief that went through me when I woke up in hospital and saw her asleep on the sofa is something I’ll never forget.  She woke up a few minutes after Billy came in to see me, I asked him what Amanda was doing there and the pride in Billy’s voice was unmistakeable when he said, “She saved your butt.” Amanda woke up a few minutes afterwards and I remember her sitting on the bed and holding my hand.   I looked up at her and I was _so_ grateful that she was there that I couldn’t say anything.  She stuck with me throughout the case even forcing me to lie down and sleep while we were waiting for news.  Billy gave her a AOS-16 rating for a week so that she could make sure that I rested as per Dr Scardelli’s instructions.  She put me straight to bed when we got back and spent most of the week making sure that I rested as much as possible.  She was a marvel, and it was towards the end of the week that I found myself surreptitiously looking at her as she cooked.  I’d never noticed how pretty she was, how her dark hair curled against her neck in tiny little ringlets, or her vibrant dark eyes full of life.  I began to realise that I wanted Amanda to be much more than a partner and much more than a friend.

 

**SAMK**

 

Despite all this Amanda can be as stubborn as they come.  Melrose had her working as the ‘Agent of Record’ for a Dr William Towne and it seemed to me and the agency that Towne was a KGB Spy.  Amanda was adamant that this wasn’t the case that there had to be some other explanation.  It was one of the few times that Amanda and I quarrelled.  She was so angry with me when we walked into the bullpen.  I was still convinced that Towne was a KGB agent and then Billy dropped the bombshell that the package ‘Gregory’ had been talking about was Francine and he would trade her for Towne.   Amanda was furious, she picked up the chemical breakdown of the Moo Goo Gai Pan and started to read down it – and then she spotted the MSG which Towne’s wife had had an allergic reaction to the last time she’d visited them.  And she stated that although Towne had forgotten the first time he wouldn’t forget again, and then I realised that the whole thing was an elaborate setup and the Agency would have fallen for it and then I said ‘but our Agent of Record caught it,’ and smiled at her.  It wasn’t exactly an apology but I was so proud of her at that moment, for sticking to her guns and facing me down.  She looked back at me her face hesitant and open and I realised that I was falling in love with her and I was so pleased.  Oh yes, My Amanda was no pushover.

 

**SAMK**

 

One thing I can be certain of is that where there’s trouble, Amanda will find it.  Or it will find her.  To be honest this isn’t always the case, but it happens often enough now for me to take notice.  Take the car accident in front of the Train Station – of all the people who could have hit her it had to be Steven Sallee, although it was Amanda’s insistence on returning his money that put us onto him.  Either she has exceptionally good luck or exceptionally bad luck.  True, Amanda turned it to the agency’s advantage, she went through Millicent MacDonald’s diary the police had discovered and plotted out Sallee’s route to work; the sandwich shop where he bought his breakfast.  But it was the music that caught Sallee out, he’d bought it at a small music store opposite the Hotel Monroe and that was where Sallee was planning his hit.  He’d replaced some of the bulbs for the chandeliers with his own that contained plastique, then he’d turned up the rheostat so that more current would flow through the bulbs themselves blowing as many as possible.  Again it was Amanda who noticed the similarity between the bulb we found at Millicent MacDonald’s and the ones that had just been replaced.  It was extraordinarily quick thinking on her part and we saved the lives of three Ambassadors and the Vice-President.  Amanda and I quietly slipped away afterwards to have a quiet supper at her house.  It was wonderful to have the time together, even doing the washing up afterwards.  If anyone had suggested three years ago that I’d be happy eating at home and then helping someone wash up I’d have laughed in their face, but I began to realise that the one person I was happy doing that with was Amanda –My Amanda.  We sat down with coffee and cake and I was about to tell her how much she meant to me and then suddenly her mother and the boys returned and I had to make a hasty exit.  She followed me and we hugged and I gave her a quick kiss, but the moment was lost.

 

**SAMK**

 

I’d finally realised that Amanda was someone I wanted to become involved with but opportunities seemed slow to present themselves.  We would cuddle and I was very protective of her but I had never said that I wanted to get to know her better or even to go out with her nor had I declared myself or my feelings.   I’d even tried when we were on the Theatre Case and Amanda and I were rehearsing in the Q-Bureau except that Francine interrupted us.  Much as I like and respect Francine as a colleague that’s one of the few times I could have quite happily throttled her.  Amanda and I were involved with a plot to extract information from a Dr von Klausen.  I managed to underestimate Amanda (again) especially when we were both handcuffed in the car.  Mischa, Krutiov’s chauffeur had injected me with something pretty potent and he accosted Amanda after she’d changed and come down the street to meet me.  He handcuffed her and then forced her into the car next to me.  I woke up about three hours later and Amanda asked if I had a half-rake, I replied that I had a double-diamond in my collar stay but it was no use because I’d been handcuffed so tightly that my hands were numb.  She just replied that luckily she’d got the seven percent of bad guys who didn’t cuff you behind your back, pulled the lock-pick from my collar and then proceeded to extricate both of us from our shackles.  She is one amazing lady.

 

**SAMK**

 

Even today I wonder how it took me so long to recognise my feelings for Amanda, but after that case when I finally decided that I wanted things to be more serious was the best day of my life.  Billy nearly caught us but I finally decided that I wanted to show Amanda how I felt.  It had taken me so long and the joy in her face when she realised that I wanted to take our relationship to another level was a wonder.  I remember smiling down into her face as she put her hands on my shoulders, she’d done it before but it had never felt quite the same.  I bent my head and kissed her properly.  Then when we parted we stood looking at one another for a long moment and I said the only words I could think of, “My Amanda.”

      

 

  **The End**

 

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: 'Scarecrow & Mrs King' is the property of Warner Bros. and Shoot The Moon Productions. This story was written simply for entertainment purposes and I make no claim on these characters, I just took them out of my shoebox to play with them for a bit.


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